On day 4 we decided to sleep in a bit and then catch a bus to the Blue Lagoon on the way to the airport. Of course we waited too long and headed down for the buffet breakfast after it was already closed. I really don't know why we couldn't remember what time breakfast was.
I'm not sure what time we arrived at the Blue Lagoon but we were on the bus for about an hour. Guess who was asleep?
When we got off the bus we locked up our suitcases and walked down the pathway to the entrance. The location of the lagoon was so weird. Driving up all you could see in every direction was gigantic lava fields. There were no houses, buildings or people anywhere.
We got on a pretty long time until we got up to the counter where we received towels and robes. This was the worst part of the day -- there were no instructions and TKO and I had no idea where to go. It was bizarre. Even more bizarre was that everyone around us seemed to know what they were doing. We took a wild guess and headed into our separate locker rooms hoping we'd eventually meet somewhere on the other side.
I put away my things, changed into my suit, and bypassed the "mandatory" pre-lagoon shower. It was so cold outside!! TKO and I hung up our towels and ran out into the lagoon, which to my surprise was actually hot! I was so sure that I wasn't going to be able to stay out long and didn't believe it would actually be hot. The first thing you notice about the Blue Lagoon is how BLUE it is (duh). The water is really cloudy and you can only see a few inches below it. There is steam rising off of it and the whole thing just looks fake, in a beautiful way :)
I wish we could have brought our cameras out but it wasn't worth the risk of getting them wet. We stayed in the lagoon for a few hours -- we swam around, I put on some sort of mineral face mask that they provided and we got some goodies from the swim-up bar. TKO got a beer and I got a vanilla ice cream bar! It was so surreal to me that I was in Iceland, in February, in some sort of lava-induced hot lagoon, eating ice cream while it was snowing/raining. So crazy!
They had a couple of steam rooms you could hop into and we went in for a few minutes. In one of them we both couldn't breathe at all...it was pretty funny. When it was time to get out we went to our respective locker rooms. I was ordered to take a shower (I was going to anyway!) and then ordered to dry off in a separate room. I'm making this sound worse than it is -- all of these things were necessary it was just funny there were people standing there giving orders.
Once dressed we headed back to the bus, but not before stopping to take a couple of pictures. You can see how beautiful my hair is looking here -- it seriously felt like I had a rat's nest on top of my head. I thought the mineral-filled lagoon was going to make it softer!
We were on the bus for another half hour or so until arriving at the airport. We got through security quickly and then had our last Icelandic meal. We left Iceland at 5 pm their time and landed at 5:40 EST! TKO had to head right onto a flight to Chicago but I went home and spent 2 hours getting the knots out of my hair.It was an amazing vacation and I wish we could have spent more time there! Now where to go next....
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